MaaS summit gathers top-level transport experts in Copenhagen

The fourth annual high-level event on Mobility as a Service (MaaS) was held in Copenhagen on Monday , in conjunction with the 25th ITS World Congress.

The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications and the MaaS Alliance, together with the European Commission organized the event, said a government press release.

The European Commission has declared this year the Year of Multimodality. In this framework, the focus of this year’s MaaS Summit is on questions around multimodality in MaaS. In the context of Mobility as a Service, multimodality should be understood as a seamless use of different transport modes and public, private and shared fleets and resources.

The Summit was opened by Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications Anne Berner, followed by the European Commissioner for Mobility and Transport Violeta Bulc, and the Secretary-General of International Transport Forum (ITF) Young Tae Kim.

“Multimodal MaaS can help us solve many of our current issues. It can create well-being with new services, help us reduce transport emissions and offer innovative business opportunities. The first MaaS Summit was held in Finland back in 2015 and it has been inspiring to follow how MaaS has developed from a concept to a real service model now being deployed in various locations throughout the world,” said Berner.

The aim of the Summit is to bring fresh ideas and inputs to discussions about MaaS and to identify the next steps needed to introduce real multimodality in the MaaS context. Approximately 60 high-level transport experts from around the world, representing the business community, research institutes and the public sector participate in roundtable discussions, focusing on topics such as data sharing, the regulatory framework necessary for MaaS, as well as multimodal approach to infrastructure and services.

“Experience from implementations has given us a good understanding of the obstacles we still need to solve to unlock the full potential of MaaS. Here the Summit has a unique value, gathering leading MaaS experts from around the world and helping us create a roadmap towards a common MaaS vision. The ITS World Congress provides a great context for the Summit as the whole MaaS movement was born within the international ITS community and has strong roots here”, said Jacob Bangsgaard, the President of the MaaS Alliance and CEO of ERTICO – ITS Europe.

The MaaS Alliance is an international public-private partnership creating the foundations for a common approach to MaaS. The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications is one of its founding members.